vengeance is a dish best served cold
by danickzta
Summary: The meeting with the Grounders didn't go quite as planned. Now they're torturing Clarke, and hell hath no fury like Bellamy scorned. Set during the events of a slightly AU {1.09}.
1. vengeance is a dish best served cold

**/1/****vengeance is a dish best served cold**

_The meeting with the Grounders didn't go quite as planned. Now they're torturing Clarke, and hell hath no fury like Bellamy scorned. Set during the events of a slightly AU {1.09}._

this idea came about as a mix of "Clarke's the only medic, what if she got injured" and "what if the Grounders wanted revenge" (and bellarke of course, what do you take me for) and then it kind of took a dark turn and morphed into something that i can most definitely say is the angstiest thing to have ever graced my keyboard.

_disclaimer_: i have no affiliation with the CW's _The 100_, and if i did, i'm pretty sure i would've already been fired on grounds of unnecessarily excessive character angst. also, i swear i'm not a terrible human being. pinky-swear it.

also, let's maybe just rate this T

* * *

As he breaks out of his stupor, filmy gauze peeled back like a curtain, the first thing Bellamy notices is the smell, musty and yet somehow fresh, a strange combination he's come to associate with Earth. Fitting, seeing as it's populated by both a host of new, strangely wonderful experiences and bands of roaming savages. He breathes in the scent, savoring it, letting it clear his hazy mind, and opens his eyes.

And he could kick himself because the first thing he noticed should certainly _not_ have been the smell. Much more relevant are the stone walls and ceiling (_dirt and crumbling wood_) that box him in, a rickety staircase leading up and out, the only source of light in the dim room. Or the fact that he can't move his arms or legs. That probably comes first. He's strapped down to a chair and Bellamy is almost 99.6% positive that that is not where he began the day.

He whips his head from side to side, up and down, and he catches sight of a shock of blonde that stops his confusion dead in its tracks.

_Clarke._

She's lying in a heap on the floor, and the knife strapped to her thigh brings everything back in a rush of clarity that winds him as well as any blow to the head could've.

_Finn's meeting with the Grounders. Clarke offering to step up as representative of their people. His own goddamn ego and refusal to relinquish the mantle. The leader of the Grounders holding a knife to her throat. The crunch of twigs underfoot behind him. And then, nothing._

And that can only mean one thing: they've been taken. He struggles against the ropes that bind his wrists with renewed effort, succeeding only in straining a muscle and chafing skin. He growls in frustration, ready to hurl a less-than-complimentary name at the wall across from him, but then he realizes that Clarke hasn't been restrained (_which he admits is a little suspect, but who is he to question when the universe decides to give you lemons?_). "Clarke. Clarke! Wake up!"

At first, she barely stirs, but soon she's groaning and leveraging her arms beneath her, picking herself up out of the dirt. She turns to Bellamy and narrows her eyes. "Bellamy? What's—?"

And then Clarke's eyes widen and Bellamy hears a voice like icy fingers creeping down the back of his neck, trepidation gripping him in its fetid claws. "Good. You're both up."

Through his growing unease, he tries to place the cadence of the voice, the way it seems both monotone and yet ripe with intimidation at the same time. But he can only focus on the way Clarke goes stiff all over before a woman steps out from behind him and recognition rears its head: the Grounders' leader.

Stringy brown hair, clad in a simple, unassuming tunic and white markings, expression placid, she doesn't seem like much. But Bellamy remembers the way her knife against Clarke drew blood, the way she'd smiled as something clubbed him in the back of the skull.

For a moment, he only stares at the woman, speechless. But then a man covered in furs and tattoos and a menacing amount of girth emerges from the shadows near the stairs, and Bellamy doesn't have time to shout a warning before he seizes Clarke by the elbows and pulls her toward him.

Clarke recoils immediately. "Let go! Let go of me, you mother—!" The Grounder restraining her silences her with a vicious slap to the face, the force of which knocks her to the dirt. When she lurches forward through her daze and grabs for the axe at his belt, he delivers a savage kick to her ribcage. She curls in on herself, wheezing for air, and in between her pants, Bellamy can make out one single, whispered word that hollows him, focuses his existence on the swath of blonde hair and crumbling resolve huddled on the floor in front of him: his name.

He sees red. Strains against the rope that fetters him to his chair. Tries his damndest to break free and show their captors that you don't just fuck with Clarke and get away with it. His voice starts out quiet, quivering in spite of itself, and then charges ahead and fills itself with rage and unspoken promises of violence. "No… no. No! Don't you touch her!" But his threats hold all the weight of Clarke's whispered plea.

The Grounder yanks her up by her hair and drags her to the center of the room. She digs her heels into the dirt, claws at his fists, hurls obscenities, but her attempts at escape seem feeble in the face of her swimming vision and the Grounder's air of dangerous nonchalance. He seizes one wrist, and then the other, binding them tightly in a loop of coarse rope and dangling them from the ceiling, pulling it taut until her boots barely touch the ground. He unhooks his belt from around his waist, and Bellamy sees with a growing sense of dread that it isn't just a belt: it's a whip, hewn together out of rough leather and twine.

He distantly wonders who else has had the misfortune of coming to the same realization, but then Clarke stops thrashing and kicking and begins to talk. Her voice is steady, serious, betraying almost none of her fear, and Bellamy would almost believe she was calm if he didn't know her any better, the way her eyes flick back and forth, up and down when she's anxious.

"You don't have to do this—we don't mean you any harm. If you just give us a chance we can tell you who we are, where we came from. We just want peace..!"

The Grounders' leader ignores her and turns to Bellamy. "You torture one of ours, we torture one of yours. An eye-for-an-eye. We will show you what happens to those who don't understand how things work here. As leader to your people, it is paramount that you understand the consequences of your actions." She turns to the man, who has positioned himself behind Clarke, and says simply, "Begin."

Bellamy feels his stomach drop somewhere between his knees as his eyes desperately seek Clarke's, and when he finds them, he wishes that he hadn't been so damn arrogant, that he had let her step up as leader of their people instead. Maybe then she'd be in his shoes, and he in hers.

The whip arcs down, and for one furtive moment, her eyes cloud over with a flash of panic before they're replaced with something much worse: _pain_. Her eyes roll back in searing hot agony, but she grinds her teeth together and holds herself still in a show of defiance, and Bellamy is absurdly proud of her before he sees the Grounder let loose another strike. He hits her again and again, and with every strike he can see Clarke's resilience, her determination, uncoiling and slithering away from her inch-by-inch. Her winces grow louder and louder and the red on the whip, darker and darker, until something snaps and she's screaming and shrinking away as far as her bonds will let her.

Bellamy feels Clarke's pain as a living thing, and his own soon entwines with hers. He shoots a venomous glare at the Grounders' leader, stoically observing the crying, shaking girl as if she is no more than a sack of meat waiting to be flayed, and snarls at her in a fit of rage and loathing. She regards him callously, her eyes unblinking as if to say, "See what happens when you defy me?" Bellamy is hurling indecipherable strings of profanities and delirious pleas (_shouting her name over and over and over again_) and he's aware that they're falling on deaf ears but, _damn it_, Clarke is in pain and helpless and if there is one thing Bellamy knows about her, it's that she _hates_ showing weakness.

Her abuser switches arms and strikes again, and then Clarke is wailing, _wailing_, and Bellamy has never heard anything so horrible before. It is all he can hear, sharpened into a dagger and piercing him down to his very core, assaulting him on all sides, and it is all he can do to not start wailing himself.

The lash comes down again, jerking Clarke forward, the aftershock as she writhes in her bonds. This time, her legs give way from under her, and she slumps, supported by no more than the ropes that encircle her bloodied wrists, rubbed raw and chafing.

Bellamy thinks that surely, _surely_, this will be the end of it; they'll see that Clarke can handle no more, that they've broken her resolve (_his and hers, both_), that this is some dark, perverse side of humanity that should never, _ever_, be let loose again. But they don't.

The man lifts his arm again and lets it fly, the whip coiling around Clarke's torso, ripping her shirt (_that shirt that she wore when she told him he wasn't a monster, that she _needs_ him_) and leaving a welt of fresh blood in its wake. This time, she only exhales sharply, her voice lost to her torment.

"Stop—stop it..! Please! I'm begging you… please, stop…" he chokes out, his voice stumbling and catching on his words. "I understand now; I'll do whatever you want. Just stop it…" Bellamy's trembling, eyes flicking back and forth between Clarke and the man, imploring him, bowing his head in supplication, all notions of pride and bravado thrown out the window. His voice cracks and wetness fills his eyes, his rage replaced with an all-consuming fear for the girl hanging in front of him.

She's just so still. And Clarke is never still. She's always ordering someone around, arguing with him, solving someone else's problems but never her own. Whether he wants to admit it or not, whenever she steps into a room, it's like she's all anyone can see, an implacable force of nature surrounded by walls of resolve and compassion and a hope that he just doesn't have the luxury to afford. He silently prays to whoever is listening that she'll get through this undamaged and whole and optimistic again, and he feels ridiculous, but _damn it_, all he cares about is Clarke and the soft whimpers that are making her chest rise and fall.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the Grounders' leader gesture something, and the man who is hurting Clarke—_hurting_ Clarke—stops. He brings the whip up and licks it—actually _licks_ it, as if this is some sort of sick parody of those Grade B horror movies Octavia always asked him to smuggle in—and drops it at his feet. He digs his fingers into Clarke's back, which Bellamy is trying to imagine isn't covered in bruises and blood and crisscrossing wounds, and sneers when she moans.

"I heard one of your men thought we looked scarier with our face paint. Maybe you will too." And he smears Clarke's blood over Bellamy's face. Bellamy gags when bile rises in his throat.

"Enough, Raffe." The Grounders' leader raises a hand, and Raffe retreats backward, wiping the rest of Clarke's blood on his pant leg and running his hand through the ends of her hanging hair as he passes.

Before Bellamy can react, the leader approaches him, bends low and whispers in his ear, her words dripping with condescension, "Hopefully you learned something today; if you value your life or the lives of your people at all, you will acquiesce when we want something. You will leave us to our devices. When we ask you to jump, you will say, 'How high?' Do you understand, boy?"

Bellamy glances at Clarke, face covered in bruises and a thick sheen of sweat, hair matted with dirt and spatters of blood, and has to bite back a retort about how all he understands is how badly he wants to tear this woman limb-from-limb and make her suffer just as badly. When he doesn't answer, the woman grabs his chin between thumb and forefinger and jerks it up. "I asked you a question, boy."

He meets her glare with his own and snarls, "I understand."

The woman flicks his face aside as if it disgusts her to have touched it and stalks away. Halfway up the cellar's stairs, she calls over her shoulder, "Better clean and dress those wounds. If she doesn't die from blood loss or shock, the infection will get her." And then she's gone.

Raffe soon takes her place and slowly, mockingly, furls the whip back around his waist. "You're lucky I'm not in charge. I take even less kindly to smug little interlopers like you. And I can think of a few different ways this could've ended." He leisurely rakes his gaze over the length of Clarke's battered body, in a decidedly vile way that sends chills down Bellamy's spine and renews his hatred of this man and all the visions of what he'll do to him when he gets free.

Raffe slides a finger down her cheek, and he smirks when she doesn't recoil in disgust, as if she hasn't just been beaten past the point of consciousness. "Till' we meet again." He unlatches a knife from his boot and kicks it over toward Bellamy's feet. And then he's gone too.

For a second that stretches into the silence (_the kind of silence that accompanies complete and utter despair, that follows as you return to your tiny little home, empty and silent and yet somehow filled with the echoes of your mother's screams as she floated, or your sister's cries as she looked at you in disappointment_), for that second, Bellamy just sits there, frozen: in his anger, in his grief, in his guilt, he doesn't know what. Clarke is in pain, most definitely terrified and disoriented, and it's _his_ fault. _He's_ the one who brought the Grounder back to camp. _He's_ the one who tortured him. _He's_ the one who was too weak to finish the job, eliminate any possibility of retaliation. And they _had_ retaliated, in the worst possible way. He can't stomach what he's done any more than he can stomach the sight of the brutalized girl in front of him.

But Clarke needs him. He chokes back what he tries to pretend isn't a sob (_he has to be brave for Clarke, he_ has _to_) and breaks himself out of his reverie, eying the knife on the floor. He rocks back and forth on the heel of the chair until it crashes on its side, and even though his face smashes into the ground and he can feel wetness trickling off of his nose, he twists and turns until he palms its handle. Fingers slick with sweat and concentration running in haphazard circles, he fumbles with it until he liberates his hands and slices through the knots at his ankles.

In a daze, he stumbles over to Clarke but stops short of touching her. Hand hovering in the loaded space between them, afraid that if he reaches out, she might shatter into a thousand tiny shards, each one more fragile than the next. But then he sees the blood pooling from the gash in her shirt, and he lays a tentative palm on her shoulder and shakes. And then he feels wrong, because what if he's hurting her more? But when she doesn't respond, he grows more frantic. He cuts her wrists out of their bondage and winces at the sight of their mangled skin, cut through with red and splinters.

But nothing can prepare Bellamy for what he sees next. As Clarke pitches forward, he cushions her body with his own and catches a glimpse of what's been done. What he sees makes him want to retch. What he sees is worse than Atom's body in the woods all those weeks ago. What he sees is agony, spelled out plain and clear on what was once the skin of Clarke's back. Cords of raised flesh, bloodied and bruised in a disgusting array of purples and blacks, litter her back, her shirt lacerated into tatters that barely conceal anything. Thick rivulets of crimson stream from her wounds, tumbling into one another and painting anything left undamaged in a sick sheen of blood.

Bellamy tries to tamp down his rising horror, balling the material of what remains of her shirt in his fists, lip curling up in a new bout of fury. But all he can picture is this Clarke juxtaposed next to the one who told him he wasn't a killer, who defended him in front of Jaha, who fired a rifle and beamed at him afterward. The Brave Princess.

He lowers her to the floor, props her on her side, cradles her cheeks with shaking hands (_they almost envelop her entire face, has she always been this tiny?_). "Clarke. Clarke! Can you hear me? Please say you can hear me…" When she doesn't answer, he traces a trembling line over the bruise on her chin, feeling about as rubbed raw and vulnerable as he's ever felt before. He just isn't equipped to deal with anything remotely like this, overcome with guilt and self-loathing as he is. "I can't do this without you…"

He hangs his head and grinds his knuckles into the dirt, and then all of a sudden, Clarke is moving, gasping for air and very nearly convulsing. Her eyelids flutter open, and all at once, she's flailing away from him and then reeling forward as the mass of ruined skin on her back hits her full force. Her pupils twitch back and forth, rapidly adjusting and dilating in the cellar's dim light, and her hand clamps around his wrist like a vice.

"I—where?" Her gaze finally settles on Bellamy and colors with recognition. She sucks in a breath as her mouth curves into a trembling O. "A—are… you hurt?"

"What? Am I—?" He lifts his fingers to his temple, and they come away red. "I'm fine. This isn't only mine, it's—" He hesitates. _Scarier with our face paint, maybe you will too._ "It doesn't matter. Clarke… god, I'm sorry. I couldn't stop them. I tried, but I couldn't—"

She shudders as another wave of pain rips through her, but she tightens her grip on his arm in spite of herself. "Bellamy… not… your fault." God, she's comforting him. She's comforting him, and he's just sitting here like an asshole, basking in it when she's bleeding out on the floor and whimpering and shaking and in so much pain she can't even see straight. It's all too much.

"Stop worrying about me!" he yells, wincing when she flinches back. "Clarke, it's bad. You've lost a lot of blood and I'm not a medic like you. I'm just some guy and I've never dressed a wound like this before and we don't have anything—"

"… camp… now…" she murmurs, cutting him off. "… supplies…"

Even semi-conscious, she's more alert than he is (_as she always has been, hasn't she?_), and Bellamy feels ridiculously grateful that she's still aware enough to order him around. He's no dashing hero, medical genius, survivalist extraordinaire, but he'll make sure this exasperating, infuriating girl comes out of this in one piece if it kills him. And if he can't keep calm in the process, he sure as hell has to keep strong. He makes a deliberate effort to shove aside his guilt, his anger—he'll deal with those later—and braces her against his side, shrugging his jacket over her shoulders. He gently lifts her onto his back, trying to not cringe and jostle her further when she moans and feebly digs her nails into his chest.

He swallows the stutter in his throat and moves his feet forward, one after another: _left, right, left, right_. "Clarke, I'm going to take us back to camp now, but you have to stay awake no matter what. No passing out on me because I'm not above dropping you in that Loch Ness-infested river Octavia was telling me about. Or doodling a monocle or some handlebars on your face; they'd go nicely with that shiny, new bruise of yours I think."

He tries to ignore the silent tears he feels slinking down his neck, the blood wetting his shirt. Only adrenaline carries him up the stairs and out into the forest, the sunset backlighting the trees in shades of red and violet that seem to mock him, make him want to turn away and bury his face in his hands. But, instead, he presses on, stumbling in the direction his gut tells him is home.

"If you don't pull through this, I don't know who's going to nag me and Spacewalker all the time. And you still need to face your Mother. You can't expect just me to face my demons; that's not fair. When we get back and you're feeling better, I'm going to lock you in the Comms Tent until you two work things out, okay? So you need to get through this… okay?"

He's babbling, but Clarke is breathing softly into his ear, mumbling an occasional assent, and for now, he's hopeful. And that's enough.

* * *

_**{fin.}**_


	2. part two

**/1.2/vengeance is a dish best served cold (part two)**

so this has been taking up space on my computer in various forms of completion for the better part of two years now. it's set before Unity Day even aired, so remember: Bellamy and Clarke weren't exactly exchanging friendship bracelets (probably), Octavia was still a Sky Girl (sort of), and Flarke was still (kind-of) a thing.

also, disclaimer: i have no idea if throwing alcohol on a wound _actually_ cleans it (thanks for that, dubiously factual television), but i don't have the wherewithal to do actual _research_. so if it's completely wrong, let's just pretend that, without their only semi-doctor around, the delinquents are utterly useless at an operating table.

thanks for everyone who stuck with this story for the eternity and a half it took to write it!

* * *

They make it back to camp god knows how many hours later.

When someone opens the gates and Bellamy stumbles through, he's greeted by a chorus of distress, by a flurry of faces and hands and bodies that mean well, but are doing nothing but getting in his way.

He wants to do nothing more than stagger to his tent, drop to his cot and curl up and sleep and sleep until everything is all a distant nightmare. But the weight at his back, the hair tickling his neck, the quiet whimpering in his ear, propels him forward, carves a path through the crowd and farther into camp.

"Is that Clarke?"

"Where were you?"

"What the hell happened!?"

"Oh shit!"

Finn is suddenly on his heels, keeping pace with him. "Oh god, is she okay?" he asks, voice as panicked as Bellamy's ever heard it. When Bellamy doesn't respond, just keeps rushing ahead, Finn jumps in front of him, blocking his path. "Hey. Hey! Stop!"

"Does she look okay?" Bellamy snarls, elbowing past him and darting toward the Dropship.

At the sight of him (_uninjured and slack-jawed and utterly ignorant about what has just occurred_), Bellamy is overcome with an irrational surge of what he can only describe as absolute malice toward Finn for having set up the meeting in the first place. But then he remembers whose fault it really is—_stupid, stupid, _stupid_—_and that now is not the time to be throwing around blame (_even though it is his own completely, it _is) so he shoves down his nerves and races ahead, brushing aside the cloth of the entryway.

He shoulders a few astonished kids out of the way (_they're all a blur of faces; nothing really matters except for the fact that Clarke's breaths have been getting progressively shallower and shallower_)and makes a beeline for the table. Finn helps him ease Clarke off of his shoulders and gingerly lay her face down.

He allows himself half a second to take in the stark contrast of her blonde hair against the forbidding gray of the metal table, and then he's whipping his head up, eyes frantically searching the room until they land on who they're looking for.

"Raven, get her Mother on the radio. Now!"

For a moment, all Raven does is stare, features a mixture of shock and confusion, a combination he's never seen her grapple with before. But then she snaps out of it and shakes her head.

"We haven't been able to reach the Ark all day; there must be another storm coming in. It's radio silence."

Bellamy doesn't have time to stop himself before he's slamming a fist into the side of the table. "Damn it, Raven..!"

Raven jolts forward and gets in his face. "Hey! It's not my fault, so simmer down," she snaps. But when she shoots a glare at Bellamy, she must see something in his expression because her features soften, and she nods her head. "But I'll keep working at it," she assures him, and then she turns on her heel and flies out of the Dropship.

After she disappears outside, Bellamy tries to compose himself before he turns back toward the table in the center of the room and takes a shaky step forward. For one wretched second, he watches the slight rise and fall of Clarke's frame (_he can tell that her movements have been getting less and less conspicuous_), and then he lifts his arms and lets them hover above her.

He doesn't want to take the jacket off, because that will make it all so real again. But if they don't do something soon, she's going to bleed out right here, in the same place where she's saved so many of them before.

He grits his teeth at the irony of it all and grabs the collar, carefully lifting it from her shoulders and letting the ruined fabric drop to the ground. There's a collective intake of breath around the room, and for a moment, everyone goes silent. There is only the sound of Clarke's rasping breaths, assaulting his senses and caging him in on all sides like a prison.

It doesn't seem possible, but her back looks even worse than before.

He can't make out anything but a canvas of muddied red, giving way to patches of purples and blacks, a gradient of colors made all the more gruesome by flaps of what must be flayed skin stiffened by dried blood. There's bruising creeping out from underneath it all, its fingers crawling toward her ribcage and below the waist of her pants. He can't even count the strokes, can't see where the injuries begin and end; all there is is a mass of ruined skin. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that she's going to be horribly scarred for the rest of her life. Her mutilation will be there to torment her for as long as she lives, and that sickens him, makes him want to retch all over again. He hears someone behind him do just that.

His eye twitches.

"Why didn't anyone come after us?"

"Finn and Miller took squads out a few hours ago. Miller's not back yet," someone says.

Bellamy fights to stop himself from asking what took them so long, from snapping at them that they should have tried _harder _(_he might've been an unraveling mess of nerves for most of it, but he knows that it's been at least a day_). Something niggling at the back of his mind tells him that he would've made the same call in their shoes, that it was the smart move.

He's aware that he's being hypocritical, but he looks at Clarke's limp body and all he feels is an unshakeable sense of betrayal.

Suddenly, Jasper pushes to the front of the crowd and brightens. "What if we go get that seaweed stuff she used on me when I—" he frowns uneasily, "y'know."

"He's right," Monty says. "It has definite medicinal properties. If you bring some back, I'm pretty sure I can replicate the poultice Clarke made."

The mood in the Dropship seems to lighten for a moment, the leaden silence replaced by the exhale of breaths held too long, by a growing buzz of relieved chatter. But then Connor says something that Bellamy doesn't quite catch and the gloom is back, Connor the epicenter of it all.

Bellamy finally tears his eyes away from Clarke (_he's been trying to this entire time, but it's like she's a magnet and he just can't stop—_) and carefully turns toward him. "What did you say?"

Connor grinds his teeth and can't quite meet Bellamy's glare. "But Jasper didn't end up being a lost cause…" he mumbles.

And then Bellamy sees _red_. In his peripheral, he sees Finn lunging at the same time, but he makes it across the room first and he's slamming Connor into a wall, hands fisted in his shirt, veins bulging in his neck, voice dangerously low.

"Shut. Up."

"I'm just saying that we don't have time to waste on her! If the Grounders really are out for revenge, who's to say they won't be surrounding the camp any minute now? We need everyone we can get protecting us here!"

Bellamy remembers when he would have echoed those same sentiments, when he thought a single person wasn't worth his time unless it was Octavia. But he also remembers Clarke's determination, her doggedness, in the face of Jasper's pain, in the face of his disapproval, and he remembers how she was _right_. (_get Clarke whatever she needs_.)

"She's not a lost cause," he seethes.

"Are you not seeing the same girl I am? I'm surprised she's even still breathing—"

Bellamy slams him into the wall again and cranes his head up until their faces are mere inches apart. "Take. It. Back."

He sees Connor stiffen, sees him about to argue back, and he's about to lay into him, this time with his fists (_good judgment be damned_), when a whisper in his ear yanks him back from the precipice.

"Cool it, Bellamy. You're scaring people," Octavia says, laying a hand on his arm (_which he's just now realized is shaking in a way that's less violence, more desperation_). He sees the concern in her eyes, in the line of her posture, in the set of her mouth, and Bellamy knows that he's not just scaring them, he's scaring _her_, for an entirely different reason that he doesn't even want to begin to pick apart.

He realizes that he needs to _calm down_. Flying off the handle is getting nothing done but setting the camp even more on edge, prolonging Clarke's suffering and miring himself in even more guilt. He's so furious with himself and this entire situation that he would drown himself in moonshine right now if everyone wasn't counting on him, if _she_ wasn't hanging in the balance.

So he shrugs Octavia off and lets Connor go, shoving him again for good measure before turning toward Finn. "Finn, gather whatever you need and leave right now. Connor, go with him," he snarls. "Take Jasper too."

Finn only stares back, incredulous. "I'm not going anywhere!"

"It's the least you can—!" Bellamy starts, but then he checks himself. (_he can't be irrational, he needs to stay in control of himself, he needs to stay calm—_). "You're the only one who knows where to find it."

If Bellamy's open hostility bothers him, Finn doesn't show it. He just looks stricken. "It's at least six hours round trip. I don't—I can't… what if she, before I get back—"

"Finn, I swear to god—"

"I can't leave her alone."

Bellamy's jaw twitches. And then he snaps. "What? Because we're not good enough for her? Because you don't trust us?"

For a moment, Finn seems at a loss for words, like he's grappling with whether or not to say what he wants to (_there's too many people still in the room, even if they've all but seemed to fade into the background_), but then he's rearing up and standing his ground.

"Of course I don't trust you. Without Clarke, you'd have led us all to our deaths already. All you do is antagonize. All you do is make things worse! Maybe if you hadn't insisted on bringing guns to the meeting—"

Bellamy snarls. "No, this is your fault. If you hadn't treated the Grounders like anything less than our enemy, she'd be fine! She'd be—"

(_he knows he's being unreasonable, that Finn was only trying to help in his own misguided way, but he doesn't know how to deal with his own guilt, and out of the corner of his eye he can see the fabric of his ruined jacket and he can still hear her soft groans and if he doesn't take his frustration out on someone, he knows that he'll just lose it—_)

The dam breaks loose and all of the anger that he's been trying so hard to keep bottled up, everything sheer adrenaline has been suppressing, comes surging out all at once. He's hurling words at Finn like a Molotov cocktail filled with rage and a shame so palpable that all he wants to do is pretend he never set it alight.

"Where were you earlier, huh? Where were you when they clubbed us over the heads and strung Clarke up and _tortured_ her? When they ripped her back to shreds and left us to die!? Where were you at your so-called peace talks? Where were you!?"

He has to stop himself from lunging across the space between them and curling his fingers around Finn's throat. He has to stop himself because he knows that he's not talking about Finn, he's talking about _himself_. Because he was there, and all he could do, all he did, was _watch_.

In the silence that follows, he's breathing harshly, nostrils flaring, jaw twitching like crazy. He would keep going, keep venting everything he's been trying so hard to shove down, but now it's all coming back to him and it's too much, _it's all too much_.

Finn is staring at Bellamy with a hatred he's never seen him wear before, like Bellamy's nothing but a cancer to this camp, to their survival, to _Clarke_, and Bellamy can't help but think, _good. he has every right to. _He's just about to call a truce (_because what is pride in the face of their princess_), but then a voice, laced with exasperation and urgency, cuts in.

"If you don't get going right now, she _definitely _won't make it through the night," Octavia says, positioning herself in between Bellamy and Finn. "You're the only one who knows where the medicine is, and like it or not, my brother needs to walk us through what happened. So go, before she gets worse."

For a moment, it almost seems as if Finn doesn't register a word she said (_he hasn't stopped glaring at Bellamy_) but then Jasper is breaking away from the crowd and hesitantly placing a hand on Finn's shoulder. "She's right, Finn. We need to go. Bellam—Octavia, Monty? They've got this." He offers him a sheepish grin (_Bellamy can't comprehend how he can possibly see any levity in this situation, even if it _is_ Jasper_) and steps back. "Now let's go save Clarke."

Finn narrows his eyes at them all, still seething, but then he nods his head. "Fine. We'll make the trip in five. And you'd better hope she's all right when I get back." And then he's elbowing Bellamy out of his way, and he, Jasper, and Conner are just gone.

Once Bellamy manages to smother the rest of his temper, once his vision is no longer tinged with red, he turns back toward Clarke. "We need to help her. But I'm not—I've never—"

Octavia pushes forward. "I've got it. I've been helping Clarke in the med tent since we landed."

"I can help too," Monty says. "I'm an engineer. Steady hands."

Bellamy nods at them and then addresses the rest of the crowd. "Everyone else, clear the room!"

There are a few protests, but then the group is shuffling out of the Dropship until it's only the four of them (_even if it only feels like three_). Now it's silent: no more shuffling feet, muffled tears, nervous whispers. They're accompanied by only their own anxiety and an eddy of tension whipping through the room and disrupting any semblance of calm, of control.

But then Clarke groans, and the moment is gone.

"So how do we do this?" Monty asks.

"Before we do anything else, we need to clean it," Octavia says. (_Bellamy knows that none of them want to say what "it"_ _is aloud._)

When he sees the bottle of moonshine that's found its way into her hands, he can feel a dead weight burrowing its way into his gut, digging its claws in for the long haul.

And then there's movement in his peripheral, and all of a sudden, Clarke is awake.

The situation seems suddenly infinitely better and infinitely worse. She's awake (_oh thank god, she's awake_). Her eyes are boring into his and her lips are quivering and her fingers are curling and uncurling to the pace of her rapidly fluttering eyelashes. Relief courses through him and he almost feels drunk on it, giddy with it.

She's _awake_.

But that also means that she'll feel _everything_.

All at once, the dead weight is back, but he doesn't have time to fall apart again because now she's mouthing his name, once, twice, until it tumbles from her lips.

"Bellamy…"

He doesn't know how it happens, but now he's kneeling at her side, her frail hand clasped in his, mumbling nonsense words and frantic reassurances (_for her or himself, he doesn't really know_). _you'reokayyou'reokayohthankgodyou'reokay_. And then he's saying her name and his voice sounds almost as panicked, almost as lost (_no, more_), as hers did.

"Clarke."

(_he feels like he's choking on it._)

She takes in a trembling breath and then says, "Is it… is this the Dropship?"

He nods his head when words fail him.

"How—how bad..?"

Bellamy knows that anyone else in his shoes would offer her lies, meaningless words of encouragement. But as vulnerable as she is here, in this moment, he knows that she's not some weak, breakable thing; she doesn't need some distortion of reality, doesn't need him to tell her that it's not as bad as it seems (_as it must _feel).

So he doesn't lie to her. "It's not good."

Her eyes flicking away from his and to the grisly chafing of her wrist for the briefest of seconds is the only indication that this frightens her.

Then she's looking back at him and a small smile is curving her lips. "Figured." Her laugh tapers off into a wheeze, and then she's coughing violently, blood painting her chin and landing on the material of his pants. And it kills him, _it just kills him_, that she's trying so hard to seem positive. Because he knows that she's too practical to be so hopeful; she's sure that she's not going to make it, and she's trying to comfort _him_.

"Bellamy… I need you to make sure that, when the Grounders come, everyone's prepared. We—the camp can't let this happen again—"

Bellamy fights to keep his voice low. "Stop it, Clarke. Just stop it."

"No. Listen to me, Bellamy. If I don't make it through this, I need you to—"

"No, I need you to save your strength." His voice is cracking, laid bare, and he's pleading (_with Clarke, with himself, with Octavia, with whoever might listen_), throwing all of his desperation, all of his worry, behind his words. "I need you to live."

(_please_.)

Then Octavia is crouching down too, her hand on top of theirs. "Are you ready?"

Clarke looks like she wants to say more, but she must see something in Bellamy's expression, because she only sets her jaw and nods.

Octavia grimaces. "All right. Get her something to bite down on."

Monty disappears from Bellamy's line of sight for a moment, and then he's back, a small clump of wadded-up fabric in hand. He passes it off to Octavia, and they both watch as she inserts it between Clarke's teeth and starts rummaging in a nearby box of supplies.

Just when she's found what she needs, Bellamy feels a slight tug on his hand, directing his attention back to Clarke, and this one admission of vulnerability, this one silent plea, makes him want to do nothing more than curl into a corner and cry until all he feels is numb.

She won't say it, but he knows. He can read it in between her harsh pants, leaving her in rapid succession. In the feel of her death grip on his palm. In the panic in her eyes.

She's scared. Terrified.

And he thinks that he's never seen her so afraid before. He's never seen her so unhinged, never seen her not brimming with self-righteousness and a frustratingly unshakeable sense of conviction.

And that terrifies _him_.

Back on the Ark, before he even really knew her, he remembers wishing that someone would take her down a peg. One of the privileged finally knocked from her ivory tower. But now, all he feels is a burning shame. In the private recesses of his soul, he can admit that she's one of the strongest people he's ever met, and to see her reduced to this… it envelops him in a sense of wrongness so complete, so all-encompassing, that it runs almost as deeply as how he felt the day after his mother was floated, the day after Octavia was arrested, the day he returned to a home that no longer felt like home.

It's almost as if he'll look down and, in place of his clothes, covered in grime and dirt and matted blood, he'll see the blue of a janitor's uniform, the handle of a mop. He'll see how everything is just off.

Wrong.

The shaking of Clarke's hand in his own brings him back to the present. He wants to tell her, _I'm gonna help you, all right?_ He wants to echo her past resolve. But she's not a shake of the head and a few hummed verses from death. She's _not_.

So he swallows the lump in his throat and tightens his fingers around hers (_why can't he stop noticing just how tiny she is, when has she ever been so helpless?_). He brings his other hand up and brushes sweaty locks from her forehead, his thumb lingering over a patch of dried blood and muck.

"Look at me, Clarke. Look at me. It's gonna be all right. I prom—" (_but he can't promise that, can he?_) "Octavia's got this."

_I'm here_, he wants to tell her, even when he knows that it will do no good, even when he knows that, right now, she needs her Mother. She needs Spacewalker. Anyone but him.

So he doesn't say it.

Instead, he holds her gaze and manages to not look away when, out of the corner of his eye, he sees Octavia bend over Clarke's back. Sees Octavia pour moonshine over a cloth and start to dab.

For a second, Clarke's hand goes slack. She stops breathing, stops trembling, stops _moving_. But then all at once she's writhing, thrashing so violently that he can feel the metal planks of the floor vibrate beneath him. His hand has gone numb with the vise-like grip she has on it, and he can feel her convulsions wracking him all the way to his bones.

And the wailing, the _wailing_. It's like she's being tortured all over again, body swaying from the rafters, blood speckling the dirt, Raffe sneering, laughing, taunting.

As unbearable as it is for him, he can't even comprehend how agonizing, how _excruciating_, it must be for her.

It's like her screams have become a physical presence, weighing them all down and rendering them speechless. But then Octavia is motioning Monty over, directing him as he grabs her flailing limbs in an attempt to hold her down, grimacing as she applies more moonshine to Clarke's wounds.

He doesn't get up to help because, through her pain, through the mad jerking of her body, the one constant is her hand clutching at his, grinding his bones together, digging its nails in (_he sees blood welling up and dripping to the floor_). It's like they're both the only thing the other is sure of, like if either one of them lets go, everything will go spiraling out of control, and the feeling of wrongness will become even more pronounced. Like they're both the only thing keeping the other tethered here.

And then her hand goes limp.

For a second, he stops breathing; his heart stops beating, leaves his chest cavity hollow and plummets somewhere underneath the floorboards and into the wiring of the ship.

But then he sees that she's only passed out.

He lets out a watery breath that slowly crescendos into a relieved chuckle. (_Octavia shoots him a look like, "what the hell, Bell?" but he doesn't care because Clarke's still _alive_, thank god._) He lifts her hand and lowers his forehead until they touch, until he can feel how her skin is still warm (_feverish, but _still), until he can wrap his thumb around her wrist and feel the (_erratic_) beat of her pulse. He thinks he could just sit like this, shakily laughing into the back of her palm, forever (_like maybe if he stays here long enough, the next time he looks up, Clarke will be whole and happy and trying to smother a smile while she rolls her eyes at him_). But then Octavia's hip is bumping into him and she's shooing him away, brandishing a suture kit by way of explanation.

It takes him a moment to let go, but he does (_he doesn't want to let go_), and then he's backing up and watching as Monty and a needle and thread take his place. He starts to methodically stitch Clarke's skin back together, closing up the lacerations and cutting away anything that looks like it's given way to infection. The only indication that she still feels any of it is the litany of soft moans that escape her and the occasional hitching of her breathing (_which he swears is getting steadier and steadier_).

When Monty's done, her back looks much better than before; it's no longer painted in a sick sheen of red, full of canyons of rippling gashes and open wounds. It no longer makes him want to turn away and gag into a corner. Instead, the damage is more muted (_macabre in a less gruesome way_): her skin a sea of uneven ridges, cut through with knotted wire and the purpling of bruises. He looks at her and he no longer feels an awful sense of foreboding, of abject horror; all of the anxiety is melting away, giving way to an uneasy relief. Until the absence of fear makes him realize just how spent he is and a wave of exhaustion finally washes in, sweeping his knees out from under him and bowling him over until he collapses into the chair behind him.

After that, it's all a blur.

Octavia and Monty take turns reapplying moonshine, snipping off the ends of Clarke's makeshift stitches, washing her bare back until all traces of crimson are gone.

At some point, he notices that Monty has disappeared and Raven is back, fingers gouging white marks into her folded arms, foot drumming anxiously against the floor; the part of him that is still operating on logic notes that they must be tag-teaming the radio. Octavia barks at her to stop just standing around (_he thinks she yells at him too, but he's such a mess that he can't really tell, and he knows he wouldn't be much help anyway_). So, instead, he watches, steps in only when he's absolutely needed.

He watches when Octavia and Raven roll Clarke onto her side.

He helps when they need to lift her up to feed bandages under her torso.

He grunts in acknowledgment when Raven squeezes his shoulder and leaves again.

He looks away when Octavia washes the blood off of her hands.

And all he feels is numb.

* * *

When they finally finish bandaging Clarke's wounds, when Octavia declares that they can do nothing but wait, he stumbles out of the Dropship and wanders blindly around camp, stopping only when the fatigue becomes too much to bear.

He knows that he's trying to escape the sound of Clarke's cries, the sallow sheen to her skin, the underlying current of horror and the smell of blood permeating the stale air of the room.

But he's not succeeding.

Now, he's curled at the base of a tree, head cradled in his hands, fingers thrust into his hair.

The adrenaline has finally worn off, and he's only now realizing just how desperately he needed a break. He doesn't know exactly how long it took to get back to camp, but judging by the soreness in his muscles and the way the wound on his temple has caked over with dried crimson, it must've been hours. All he remembers is a foggy haze, the feel of blood slithering down his pant legs, a whimpering in his ears, a jumble of half-coherent words and desperate pleas tumbling from his lips. All he remembers is Clarke wailing, Raffe's cold sneers, how useless he was.

He digs his nails into his scalp and grinds his teeth. _Useless_. Sitting there and watching as those monsters—

His nails dig deeper. He's spiraling; he knows that. But between his fear and his anger and his revulsion at himself and the entire situation, he feels like he's losing his grip on himself. It's like he's a top that's been set spinning, and his emotions are running in haphazard circles and he can't control anything anymore when, before, control was all he had. It was all he was good for. But now, how is he supposed to lead these kids to safety, to not being tortured and _killed_, without the only person who understands him, who's forgiven him—

Octavia is suddenly crouching at his side. "Bell. Are you alright?"

He grinds his teeth together. "I'm fine."

"Bullshit. You're covered in blood," she says, reaching her arm toward his face.

Bellamy knocks her hand away. "It doesn't matter."

Octavia hesitates for a second but then lowers her hand to her side, fixing him with a long look. "Bell, you have to let _somebody_ help you. You can't just sit out here and sulk. We need you to pull through whatever _this_"—she gestures at him in a vague way—"is and get in there and start telling people it's gonna be okay."

He whips his face toward hers and only regrets his anger a little when Octavia's eyes widen. "What if it's _not_ going to be okay? What if we're just fighting the inevitable and in a few hours Clarke is—Clarke will be—" He cuts off abruptly and stands up.

"I can go get Lincoln. He's a healer. I'm sure he has something—"

Bellamy whirls on her and snarls, and Octavia takes a step back.

The look on her face tells him that he needs to get his anger in check, that he's scaring her, but he can't. He just can't because that damn Grounder is the reason Clarke is fighting for her life on that table in the first place, bleeding out and in so much pain that all he wants to do is break something, smash his fists into a tree and roar at the sky that none of this is fair. That nothing is going to be okay.

"None of this would've happened if you hadn't let him go!"

Octavia's expression morphs into one of disbelief. "No, none of this would've happened if you'd never kidnapped him in the first place!"

The words hit home because he knows that they're true, he _knows _that he's lying to himself, but right now his anger, his need to just hurt something, is greater than his guilt. His hands ball into fists and his lips curl back and his shoulders are shaking and there goes his control again—

"I am going to hunt him down, and I swear to God, Octavia, I am going to. _Kill. _Him."

Octavia doesn't shrink back. Her eyes are blazing, and she's shaking in outrage just as violently as he is. "You can throw blame around all you want, but you wanna know something, Bell? You can't predict the future. You, Lincoln, neither of you knew this was going to happen. It's nobody's fault but the people who did this to her. So stop throwing yourself a pity party and blaming Lincoln and get your act together and just. Deal. With. It."

She enunciates each word, and each one of them plows into him like a ton of bricks, knocking away his retort in a rush of clarity. Because even if she can't convince him that this is not his fault, that Clarke would be whole and safe and not beaten within an inch of her life if it wasn't for him, it doesn't really matter why it happened. All that really matters is what happens next. There will be plenty of time for self-recrimination later, if she—when she wakes up. But right now, it's not about him; it's about Clarke and how _none of them would've survived this place if it wasn't for her_. How they all need her.

How he needs her.

All of his anger deflates and he casts his eyes upward in a vain attempt to keep them dry. "I didn't know Clarke even knew how to need help, and I don't know how to deal with it. I just—I don't know what I'm supposed to do, O."

Octavia's eyes soften (_he doesn't think he's seen them without their edge since back in Section 17_). She takes both of his hands in hers, urging him to stop staring skyward and to look at her. "How about you start by getting back in there? Hiding out here isn't going to solve anything," she tells him.

He finally drags his eyes to hers (_they're still throbbing with what he doesn't want to admit are unshed tears_) and takes her in, picking up on everything that he didn't bother to notice before. There are smudges of blood dotting her forehead and caked in the crevices under her nails; bags shadow her eyes and her eyelids droop with exhaustion.

He needs to stop being so selfish, to stop wallowing in self-pity. Logically, he knows he's not the only one Clarke's suffering is affecting (_subjectively, not so much_), and he doesn't know if his whirlwind of rapidly changing emotions is annoying everyone else or himself more.

He doesn't know what to say to make this better, to make his sister understand that he's just not equipped to deal with this, that he doesn't know how to care about anyone but her. So instead, he says:

"We need her, O."

"I know," she says. "But if Clarke's taught me anything, it's how to tell when someone's not going to make it." She shoots him a lopsided grin. "She's going to make it, Bell. I promise." And then she squeezes his hands one last time before shoving him lightly in the direction of the Dropship, toward _Clarke_, and wandering away.

She's right, _he knows she's right_, so he rallies what's left of his courage and forces himself the rest of the way. As he goes, he dodges the stares of the rest of the camp, a few pitying, a few accusatory, and is grateful that they seem to be mostly studiously avoiding him (_he wonders what Octavia threatened them with to get them to leave him alone_). When he finally rounds the corner and sets his sights on the ship that started it all, he can just make out a pile of folded limbs and black hair hunched over a bottle of moonshine.

Monty.

He lifts his head and (_kind of maybe_) slurs, "My shift over?"

Bellamy frowns. "What're you still doing here?"

"What does it look like?" Monty lifts his arm and wiggles the bottle of moonshine. "Besides, Octavia said that somebody needed to be here in case she—when Clarke wakes up."

Bellamy cringes as he's hit with an entirely new iteration of guilt (_it should be him out here, he never should have left_), and Monty must read something in his features, in the gnashing of his teeth and the clenching of his fists, because now he's standing up and extending him the bottle (_he refuses it with a sharp jerk of the chin_).

"Hey. It'll be all right. If anyone can pull through this, it's Clarke."

Bellamy can only manage a grunt in response.

Monty scoffs. "She couldn't have been in better hands. I mean, seriously. Have you met me?" he waggles his fingers. "Those stitches? Top-notch."

When Bellamy doesn't respond, when he only mimics the rest of the camp and studiously avoids Monty's attempts at levity, the other boy sighs and turns to go. "I'll leave her to you, then." But before he makes it more than a few wobbling steps, Bellamy swallows the lump in his throat and lays a (_only slightly_) shaking hand on his shoulder.

"Thank you."

And never before have those words meant as much as they do now.

Monty takes another swig of moonshine. "It's the least I could do. Can you imagine you fumbling around with a needle and some wire? Pretty scary stuff."

Bellamy would roll his eyes if he wasn't still such an unpredictable wreck that he's afraid the slightest movement would start him crying. So instead, he says, "All right, already. You've made your point. Now go get some rest."

"You got it, boss." He brings his hand up in mock salute and turns to go, but then stops. "And, Bellamy? Don't get mad but… I once told Octavia you were a power-hungry jackass. For what it's worth, I take it back." And he offers Bellamy a sheepish grin.

The corner of Bellamy's mouth twitches up, and he tries to tamp down a smile (_he's not succeeding_). But it doesn't matter anyway because now Monty's walking away. When his red jacket disappears into the tent he shares with Jasper, Bellamy steels himself and climbs the ramp the rest of the way into the Dropship.

The first thing he notices (_besides the acrid stench of blood and sweat permeating the air_) is that someone's covered her back; he can only see the tips of her bare shoulders poking out of the scratchy fabric. For the first time, he's glad that those blankets he and Clarke found are an obnoxious shade of orange instead of red.

The second thing he notices is that Clarke is awake. Her eyes are flicking around the room in haphazard patterns and she's whimpering, each tiny sound like a war drum pounding in his ears. Her fists are clenching and unclenching at her sides, and even from ten feet away, he can tell that her back is spasming.

But the worst thing, the thing he wishes he could erase from his memory, is the throbbing at her temples, the lip caught between her teeth, the red rimming her eyes: he can tell that she's been trying not to cry.

And then her eyes settle on him and she sucks in a breath.

He surges forward and drops to his knees at the side of the table, face level with hers, hands clutching at the edge of the cool metal (_he doesn't know how close he should get—he can't tell if she even wants him near her—_). But when he settles next to her, she seems to relax a little, her movements less jerky, her breathing a little less erratic.

His voice comes tumbling out of him in a jumbled rush before he can stop it. "I'm sorry. Someone should've been here—you're safe now, but you shouldn't have been alone—"

"Bellamy." (_he's not sure if he's imagining it, but she seems to shift imperceptibly closer._) "It's all right. Just tell me what happened."

At her words (_surprisingly steady and free of the pain she must be feeling_), rationality takes over again, shoving aside his alarm and a whole slew of emotions he'd rather not psychoanalyze. His fingers slowly stop trying to gouge dents into the table, and he takes in a deep breath.

"I don't know how much you remember," he finally says.

"Neither do I," she admits. Then her eyes travel to the whites of the bandages winding under her shoulders. "How did you…?

"Octavia was at it for hours. She's taking a break now."

She nods her head in understanding and then asks, "Who else?"

"Monty and Raven. Finn and Jasper left to get some of that red seaweed you and Wells—you used before." His train of thought stutters to a stop as he mutters, "Connor too."

Clarke's brows draw together. "Do I even want to know?"

"Another time."

They regard each other for a moment that stretches into the silence, that's just a little too prolonged to be comfortable. Neither one of them seems to know what to say, and for once, the silent communication that they're so good at, the way they seem to be able to read each other without a second thought, fails them.

And then she's extending her hand toward him (_wincing when the movement pulls at the skin of her back_). It's only shaking a little with the effort and Bellamy's almost, _almost_, inclined to call that a win. It takes him a second (_his hand keeps faltering as it reaches out_), but soon his palm is hovering a little ways away from hers, afraid (_unworthy_) to take the leap. Clarke clucks her tongue and makes up the rest of the distance, enveloping his hand in her own.

"I'm glad you were there."

Bellamy's taken aback. He soaks in the faint bruising on her cheek, the mangled circles encasing her wrists, the stitches poking out from underneath the blanket. He can't unsee the reminders of her pain, of her suffering, and he has to force himself from reliving the nightmare that Raffe's will wrought. He recovers his voice and it wrenches out of him as a sort of strangled moan. "I'm not."

Her ice-blue eyes never leave his face, and her silence makes him feel lower than low. But then she says, "This isn't your fault."

"But, Clarke. I—"

"No. Listen to me, Bellamy. When—when that man was torturing me, you want to know what got me through it?" The tenor of her voice is pleading with him, imploring him to listen, entreating him that this is _important_. "I'd like to say that it was the thought of my Mother coming down in a few days. That it was the camp. Our home… But I wasn't thinking about _any_ of that. I don't think I was capable of remembering anything outside of that room." She takes in a deep breath and tightens her hold on him. "It was your voice. You kept on calling my name, and if you hadn't been there to remind me what was happening, who I was, I might've lost myself."

His heartbeat stutters to a stop.

"And afterward? When they left us in that hole to die? I trusted you to get us back safe." Her eyes soften. "You came through, Bellamy. I knew you would."

He's not ashamed when he has to choke down a sob.

"I feel like shit, Clarke. You shouldn't be the one comforting me right now."

She arches an eyebrow. "Should I try to convince you that you're not a piece of shit now too?"

He lets out a watery laugh. _Touché_, he wants to say. But instead, he only asks, "What can I do? What do you need?"

What she says next comes out as an only slightly abashed whisper. "Just—just stay here," she says. "And keep the moonshine handy."

"Got that covered." He gestures to the half empty bottles scattered across the floor.

Her eyes widen slightly, and she looks like she wants to wince at all that it took to keep her alive, but then her face is meeting his again and a corner of her lip is quirking up. "Some Unity Day, huh?"

Bellamy surprises himself when his laugh isn't weighed down by fear, by frustration and self-loathing. It simply _is_. Because Clarke is joking and there's more color in her cheeks than there's been in hours and a smile is playing across her lips and he no longer feels like everything is just _wrong_.

It doesn't feel _right_, per se, but he no longer feels like the ground is falling out from under him. Like he's a powder keg overflowing with rage and panic and shame. He feels lighter than he's felt in weeks, buoyed on a cloud of relief and pure awe that Clarke pulled through, that she's stronger than he even thought possible, that he won't have to do this _alone_.

Clarke interrupts his high with a tug on his fingers. "That reminds me. Unity Day—the truce with the Ground—"

He shakes his head. "Just stop, Clarke. You need to rest."

"But we need to figure this out; we'll need to start preparing—"

"We can figure it out later, Princess."

She shoots him a disapproving glare. "When's later?" But the way that her eyes are blurring in and out of focus, the way her body is uncoiling and easing itself down, tells him that she's not all that eager to put up a fight.

"Whenever you're ready," he says, gratified when she tries to suppress a smile at the echo of what she told him on a day trip not too long ago.

She looks like she wants to protest, but in the face of what he can only surmise is his sudden good humor, she relents. "Fine. But only because you asked nicely." And her eyelids flutter shut.

And he doesn't know how it happened, when it happened, but as he watches the grin fade from her lips, as her breathing begins to even out, as he remembers her resilience, her compassion in the face of everything she's been through, he wants to keep on laughing. Because he looks at her and now he knows that he's well and truly _fucked_.

Not too long after, her hand goes slack in his again, but this time, he tightens his grip and keeps on breathing.

* * *

_**{fin.}**_


End file.
